Amid a flurry of housing project launches for flats worth crores of rupees, a new survey says Indians are mostly interested in buying houses worth Rs 20-50 lakh.
Besides, housing demand in the National Capital Region, which has seen a plethora of luxurious and high-end projects being launched in the recent past, is much lower than cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
But the irony is that the National Capital Region, which includes Delhi and adjoining cities like Noida, Gurgaon and Greater Noida, has a higher supply of under-construction houses than any other region in the country and lags at the bottom in terms of availability of ready to move-in projects.
These are the findings of a survey conducted by the country's top brokerage house ICICI Securities, which sampled the trend in eight Indian cities (Mumbai, Delhi/NCR, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Pune).
As per the survey, Indian home buyers are cautiously optimistic about the property prices. They are primarily interested in mid-income housing (Rs 20-50 lakh). While 50 per cent of prospective buyers are interested in houses worth Rs 20-50 lakh, 35 per cent want a price lower than Rs 20 lakh.
Less than three per cent buyers want houses worth more than Rs 1 crore and 12 per cent are interested in a price tag of Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore. Within Delhi, most of the recent project launches have flats worth Rs 1 crore or more.
This is despite 48 per cent respondents anticipating an increase in price over the next 12 months, and 22 per cent expecting the prices to remain at current levels. An estimated 30 per cent expect further correction in prices, although as much as 73 per cent perceive the current prices to be high.
Among brokers, 65 per cent believe prices have moved up in the past three months and 73 per cent expect prices to move up in the next six months. "End-user demand is higher in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, while investor demand is higher in Ahmedabad and Pune," ICICI Securities said in its Real Estate Pulse survey.
The survey also found that more than half or 53 per cent brokers have seen increased queries in affordable housing and 44 per cent have seen drop in queries for the premium segment.
While the total under-construction supply in eight major cities at around 378 million square feet exceeds the current annual demand of around 372 million square feet, the per-month inventory for Mumbai and Bengaluru is the lowest and for Chennai and Ahmedabad is the highest.
The survey also found the rental market to be stable and trending upwards with 53 per cent of tenants saying they have seen rentals increasing in the past 12 months. The average increase in rentals has been 4.7 per cent in the country, where an average household spends 12 per cent of its monthly income on rentals.
